Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Regional Armageddon in Middle East

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Regional Armageddon in Middle EastSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 12th, 2024. Alistair Crook is here with us this morning on Is the Clock of Armageddon in the Middle East getting close to striking midnight. But first this. Judge Napolitano here. Do you know that we the people have reached 34 trillion plus in debt? It's unsustainable and it's growing.

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at Lear Capital. And I encourage every one of you to call today and get your copy of this report. There's no obligation of purchase. It's a free report. It's free education. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgesnap.com. And when you talk to my friends at Lear, tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, good day to you, my dear friend. You have argued recently in one of your pieces that the U.S. supported and supplied slaughter in Gaza and attacks on militias in the area is bringing about or may soon bring about a regional Armageddon. What do you mean? Well, what I mean by that is the embrace of Israel that was reflected in Gaza when Biden clearly embraced Israel and said, you know, do what you have to in Gaza against Hamas and we will back you. And they did with weapons and bombs

and everything. But Gaza hasn't gone so well for Israel. Not at all. They've not achieved their objectives. They freed two hostages yesterday, but altogether Hamas is very much intact in Gaza and it hasn't produced the great victories that people were expecting or hoping for from it. And so the move has been a widening wall. And so we've seen this with, of course, with the Houthis, who've been blocking, if you like, vessels sailing to Israel through the Bab al-Mandab in the Red Sea, that small straits there. And also in the north, we've seen with Hezbollah, the attempts to push Hezbollah back from the blue line, which is effectively the frontier of Lebanon. But all the time,, by the way.

It's called Kataib Hezbollah, but it's nothing to do with Hezbollah of Lebanon. It's an Italian-Iraqi organization. And some days earlier that week, they'd forsaken all their attacks on America at the request of the Iraqi government. And so they'd suspended actions, if you like, some of these missile attacks on American forces. And so we're seeing that has brought a strong reaction from Iraq. America is edging into now a conflict with these groups in Iraq in the result of this attack. There was a huge funeral in Karbala after the death, and the resistance forces in Iraq as a whole announced that this was

a 7th of October moment and that they were now going full out to attack America. Don't forget this came after the 85 targets that were hit by America. So America is getting pulled more and more into that conflict. Hezbollah's conflict is growing and intensifying, and America may get pulled into that. It's already pulled into the one in Yemen. And of course, it's watching very much what's happening in Gaza and finding that its policies, that its approach to Gaza is really breaking down the various components to it, the idea of trying to have a ceasefire of some sort or an exchange of hostages, the idea that the Saudis would come out and say something about normalization with Israel and that they would be able to announce a sort

of Palestinian state. All of these sort of palliatives, which were meant to sort of calm things down, really haven't worked. So the United States finds itself being pulled further and further. And I don't think much thought has been given to this because the next stage will be with Hezbollah in the north, in Lebanon. And Israel has made it very clear that that's what's going to happen. They're going to push Hezbollah back across the Litani River, which lies about 30 miles beyond the border. They're going to push it back so that the residents of the north of Israel can come back to their homes. But Hezbollah is a much, much different case than Hamas. It's a very formidable force with many weapons, many missiles. And if the United States gets pulled into that, the question is then if you get pulled into that,

what happens to those forces in Iraq and Syria? They will have a reaction and that will be blamed on Iran and people in the United States will say, well, we really have to hit Iran fast. And the question I keep asking is, you know, where are the limits? Where are Biden's limits? Is he okay for the attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon? It seems so. They've given it a green light. But what happens if that goes badly, like Gaza went back? And then people start saying, well, you know, actually, it's Iran that's behind all of this and we need to attack

Iran. I mean, you're in the United States, so you'll be aware of the many voices saying now is the time to attack Iran. Is that within his limits or is that a bridge too far for the United States? We are at the point, the 11th hour, where either the United States will find itself dragged into going all the way on supporting Israel, both in Lebanon, in Iraq, and even maybe, I hope not, with Iran. Or it needs to get out and find a way out and start to prepare Israel for the next stages. Not Gaza, but to tell Israel. It really needs to think, you know, what is its future posture in this region? All the other things have failed.

The two-state solution, all these things have failed. So how do they propose to keep Zionism in the region without going back to the old model? At the moment, the United States tries to facilitate just a return to the status quo ante, understanding it won't work, and just to sort of, just as if you like, a quietening exercise, palliatives to try and reduce tension.

Do you think that the United States has a big picture, long-term plan here, has thought this through, or do you think the military behavior of the United States is just a reaction to what it thinks the Israelis need or want at the moment? I think it's a mixture. I think it was a sort of a quick reaction coupled with hubris. I mean the hubris of thinking, oh, you know, I mean, you know, what's this Hamas in Gaza? I mean, you know, the Israelis with their massive forces and their overwhelming power. I mean, you know, the Israelis with their massive forces and their overwhelming power. I mean, you know, give them a week and it'll be over and we'll be done with us.

So let them do what they need to do. And the United States can back it and it will be popular in the U.S. And that is fine. And then they found that it hasn't worked out quite like that. And now they gave a green light and understanding to Israel. You know, okay, we understand you need to get your residents back to the north of Israel. And for that you need, you can't have Hezbollah sitting there on the fence

just, you know, a kilometer away from the towns and settlements along the border. And we understand you need to push them back. And they again think, oh, it's probably easy. You know, we'll just push the Radwan forces back across the river. No problem. And then it'll be over in a week or we can agree with Hezbollah and the Lebanese, some sort of measure by which Hezbollah will be pushed back.

And all I'm just saying is Hezbollah will never move from the south. They've moved. They've been there for 500 years. This is where they live. These are their villages, their towns. They're not going to be pushed out of those to somewhere else. And so if Israel does try to do this, I mean, there will be the beginnings of something much, much more serious, quite different order from what's been happening in Gaza.

Has this been thought through? I don't know. What are the limits? How far will Biden go? It's not clear. Do you think that the Netanyahu government has given up the ghost on securing the release of the remaining hostages? I think effectively yes. They did get distraction exercise.

It killed 67 Palestinians in the process. They wanted to have a diversionary attack, and they had that. 67 Palestinians died in that. I think more than two Israeli forces were killed, but I haven't got, can't confirm that. But, you know, I would think the Israelis will sort of push that news out slow time, won't do it straight away. They'll keep the victory in front of people's eyes at the moment, and maybe they'll feed out how many people from the Israeli forces were lost in this exercise. But yes, I think it's quite clear, you know, because the whole tenor of discussion has moved away from Gaza

for the Israel and for the government towards saying, you know, we need a big victory because we've lost deterrence. The region is no longer frightened of us. We have to get deterrence. Otherwise, we can't sustain ourselves in this part of the world. So we need a big victory, and that victory is a victory over Hezbollah or even maybe Iran. Of course, I don't believe that America wants to go and enter a fight with Iran at all. It would be a disaster.

You have mentioned several times that Netanyahu may be close to crossing President Biden's red line. What is meant by that red line? Well, I mean, it's a moving red line. What is meant by that red line? Well, I mean, it's a moving red line. It's not a very mixed one. Because you remember they said, well, listen, Netanyahu, you know, we want Gaza over before the end of January. Well, we're now well into February. And now they're saying, we really want it over before Ramadan. That's the holy month in the Muslim calendar, which is associated often with a conflict and with a renewed sort of conflict and anger. And that's on about the 9th or 10th of March,

one of those days. It depends when the moon falls. So now we always have these red lines moving. And so what is going to be the next red line? Well, the next red line, we've seen it. They said pretty well, they didn't make it a red line because Biden's red lines are sort of moving. But he said, you can't go into Rafah. Well, last night they did. And now Netanyahu is mobilizing another 30,000 reserves. Well, those 30,000 reserves at this time, when the economy is in bad shape, well, they're either for going into Rafah or they're going to the north from preparation for a conflict in Lebanon against Hezbollah. My guess is it's the latter rather than Rafah.

The Rafah will be done by Apar, not so much on foot. So Rafah's in the south. The south is the place to which the Israelis have, by encouragement, coercion and slaughter, dispatched the Palestinians. Now they're going to attack this city in the south. There's no place for the Palestinians to go but Egypt. What will Egypt do if Rafah is attacked and there's hundreds of thousands, maybe a million refugees with nothing but the clothes on their backs? It's not clear. Egypt has moved some troops there and 40 tanks. But what are the 40 tanks going to

do? Israel has before, in this recent period since October, already bombed one of the gates of Rafah, one of the Egyptian, if you like, entry points into Rafah in the past. At the moment, they're making it more and more desperate. You know, there are settlers and there are protesters stopping humanitarian aid from entering into Gaza. It's nothing else. It's just protesters and the IDF, the army, stand by and do nothing. And so we have in the north, some parts of the north, have not had food for 10 days. I mean, there is real starvation. People are dying of starvation in parts of Gaza at the moment. So they've all been pushed south. And if Israel were to bomb, if you like, the border fence, open some passageways in it, of course, there are desperate people.

They don't want to leave their homes. They don't want to leave Gaza. But, you know, if you're desperate enough, they'll go through. What will Egypt do? I mean, Egypt has no love for the Palestinians, doesn't want this to happen. But I mean, it may be a really nasty affair. Israel, you know, has been warned by Egypt that, you know, they will, it's the end of the peace agreement.

It's finished if they allow this to happen if they try and push the palestinians into the sinai but in practice what are you going to do if hundred thousand palestinians storm through an opening in the in the wall i mean i don't know because i don't know where else the palestinians can move i mean even last night in Rafah, when there were many, many casualties, I think, as I say, 67 dead, many casualties apart from the dead, when they did this one exercise to release these two hostages. The President of the United States suffered some embarrassment last week when an investigating prosecutor chosen by his own Justice Department concluded that the president presents as a sympathetic elderly man with serious memory problems. The president reacted to that.

We're going to play the reaction to it. The reaction made things worse because he confused Mexico with Egypt. My question will be, often when American presidents are having very serious domestic problems that they can't seem to control, they turn to war. Here's the day that this report came out that President Biden would not be charged with a crime for the unlawful retention, possession, and misuse of highly classified documents, because if he did, he would present to a jury as a sympathetic elderly man with a bad memory. Here was the president's efforts to refute that conclusion. As you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Osisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow

humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate. I talked to Bibi to open the gate on the Israeli side. I've been pushing really hard, really hard to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, And it's got to stop. Says it's true and accurate and sympathetic, except Al-Sisi is the leader of Egypt and not Mexico. And of course, that's been a big deal over here since the issue was the president's memory. Question to you.

Do you fear American military involvement in this Armageddon in order to get the voters' attention off the president's memory and perceived cognitive failures? I do, but first I should like to just say, I mean, you know, that there are queues of trucks trying to unload humanitarian assistance into Gaza. And it's not getting through. As I say, there are a lot of areas where people, even in the south, families are going for three days without eating.

In the north, it's up to 10 days. I mean, there is really serious humanitarian problem. And when he says we do everything to make sure it goes through, they don't. The idea for sitting at the gate of Rafah and stopping and letting the demonstrators stop the trucks from reaching Rafah completely, is it really beyond the ability of the United States to make sure that these go through with cooperation from Egypt? I don't know, but I think it's quite doubtful. But yes, this is the point. This is why I called it the 11th hour. Things are building up. America is getting more and more involved.

You know what? 85 targets attacked in Iraq. assassinations. Since then, there was another assassination in Syria. There have been two more assassinations in Lebanon. Someone is increasing the heat. Someone is escalating. Is it just Netanyahu trying to drag Biden along? Does Biden sort of allow himself to be dragged along this path? It's not entirely clear. But, you know, I'm just saying America is really, I mean, people, you know, it's slid off the front pages of, you know, Western journals. The algorithms have moved it right down. But the situation is getting tenser and tenser. And it will certainly start in West Bank. I'm surprised it hasn't started already. But the Israelis have been in and have

been a lot of killings and a lot of military action in West Bank attacking Palestinians who they suspect of being militants. But then, as I say, there's a very clear, they've said absolutely that as soon as they're ready, they are going to move Hezbollah away from the border to the north. And they suggest it will be easy because it can be done with a little bit of artillery and a little bit of bombing and that it will be pushed back. And if America believes that,

then they haven't done their homework. They don't know who they're dealing with and they need to rethink, because otherwise they'll be pulled into something much more serious, with at the same time a deeper problem in Iraq, and the Houthis continue. Even today, the Houthis have attacked another ship in the Red Sea with a missile. All of this is going on and all of this is tensifying. And Israel is moving more and more towards this sort of apocalyptic idea that only with a major victory can they reestablish the deterrence

that they need to survive in a region that is hostile towards them? So which do you think is more likely, that the United States will have a breach with Netanyahu over his intransigence and slaughter, or that the Biden administration will cave to the Beltway gods of war who wanted to bomb Tehran? I think he doesn't want to, at this stage, doesn't want a war with Iran. I don't think the Pentagon wants a war with Iran because they understand what it would involve and are not enthusiastic. But what I'm saying is that this is a conveyor belt. And, you know, once you start the conveyor belt in Lebanon

with Hezbollah and with Iraq, with the Hashad militia there, who are also well-equipped and and well armed and very nationalistic then you know the conveyor belt will take him in the direction of Iran and will he say no that's anybody's guess but I'm suspect that you might be right that the pressures for some doing something you know in the sense I said that before I said Netanyahu needs a victory because things are not going so well for him at all. His polls are not good. He needs a victory. And so that's why he's pushing for an attack on Hezbollah. Well, maybe it's the same for Biden. Maybe he needs a big victory too, in order to sort of put behind

him all these little reverses that have come about over recent period. Switching gears, did you get a chance to observe the interview of President Putin by my friend and former colleague Tucker Carlson. I did. I did. And I mean, you know, it was a tour de force of an erudite and a very smart man explaining the situation. But I think what people missed probably was why he gave the sort of 20 minutes of history, which obviously irritated. In the West, we're not used to history, and we're not used to those attention spans of that long length. But what he was trying to say, I think, was really two things. One was he's trying to say, look, you know, the question of Ukraine and Russia, this

has been brewing for a long, long time. It's, if you like, a civil war that has been underway. So don't think, you know, that it is simple and that it is just black and white. And I think the second thing was the most important point. I mean, what he was trying to say, particularly to the American neoconservative establishment, is, listen, we have been Russia, the state of Russia, since 933. We've had been attacked by Hungary, by Lithuania, by Poland, etc., etc. And at the end of it, that has always been the Russian state has stayed together. And so if you think that a little punch at Russia and we're all split into factions and we'll all disintegrate, look at history. I think that was the point of this thing.

But I think it had a really, it's an important effect. Of course, people will ignore it overall. They will say, oh, yes, this was just Putin. But if we've got a moment, I was just going to say that, you know, I tried in the past to sort of break this barrier so that you could actually talk to people or listen to people some way. And some years ago, I was trying to, during this, was during the war on terror with, you know, Islam always being put down.

And I gave a talk in Canada about what was happening in the Islamic world. And behind me, there was an orchestra playing, and they were in tuxedos, and they were playing Tchaikovsky. And at the end of the talk, I turned around and I said to the audience, do you know who you were listening to there? You were listening to the Hezbollah orchestra playing. And what were they playing? They were playing Tchaikovsky, Western music. And you tell me, and you say, you know, there's no way we can talk to these people. There's nothing to say. Well. We only have a few minutes left, but I have to play for you a clip of one of Thomas Jefferson's successors as the Secretary of State of the United States commenting on the Tucker Carlson-Vladimir Putin interview. Watch this.

What does that tell you about Tucker Carlson and right-wing media and also Vladimir Putin? Well, it shows me what I think we've all known. He's what's called a useful idiot. I mean, if you actually read translations of what's being said on Russian media, they make fun of him. I mean, he's like a puppy dog. You know, he somehow has, after having been fired from so many outlets in the United States, I would not be surprised if he emerges with a contract with a Russian outlet. Surprised or not? Not the slightest bit. This is just a replay during the Cold War when, you know, to talk to anyone in the Middle East was regarded you were a useful idiot. Tucker Carlson was brave.

It's not going to change everything instantaneously, but hopefully it begins to break down this absolute ban on people being able to listen and hear what others are saying in the world. It's very important that we do listen at some point. Alistair, thank you very much, my dear friend, for another great interview. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. All the best. Thank you very much. Of course. Coming up later today at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern and at 11, Larry Johnson. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.